The Rabid Readers Review ‘The Interspecies Poker Tournament’ by Claire Buss

The Interspecies Poker Tournament gives us another madly inconsequential Roshaven story.

Ned Spinks has a new case, but his sidekick Jenni isn’t necessarily playing on his team Claire Buss is a mistress of humour, but she doesn’t make the mistake of offering us unadulterated cheer and there are moments of real pathos which ensure that the story pulls you in and takes you along on a crazy road trip.

The wonderful thing about this book is the ensemble, the gingerbread men, the odd octopus, Roshaven itself.

I was sorry to find myself less in love with Jenni and Ned this time, but it’s still an unhesitatingly five stars.

Jane Jago.

Roshaven Revisited

A serial killer is on the loose in and around Rosehaven. Pixies, mermaids and gingerbread men are amongst the victims and the only clue is the presence of a strange silvery substance on the body of each victim. As the body count of fae beings rises, Ned and Jenni have to unravel the mystery – well Ned does, Jenni sort of already knows… 

What I really enjoyed.

The setting and worldbuilding. I love Roshaven and the way the descriptions offered by the author made it easy to immerse into the world once more. 

The character cameos. The minor characters are a true delight. From a snarky harpy to an octopus with an obsession for filing and sentient gingerbread men who have to avoid damp. The character interactions and the banter make great platforms for ongoing humour.

The concepts. There are many wonderful ideas like filled with humour and delight. I will mention but one example to avoid spoilage. Imagine opening your office door and discovering it has become a magical aquarium…

The humour. The author is fast becoming a true master of the art of comedic writing. This is not a laugh out loud book, though one or two moments came close for me, but it is one that will make you smile and giggle inwardly on just about every page. Like the very best comedy, it has moments that are very unfunny too, with pathos and even horror grounding the reader so the next exalting leap into humour is even more hilarious by contrast.

What I struggled with.

Jenni. It’s only a niggle, but Jenni is now the most powerful magical being in Roshaven. Too powerful, in my opinion, to allow the story to have jeopardy. She has a spell to solve every problem and everyone does what she tells them. Even Ned only goes so far as to feel ‘snippy’ at her when she consistently and persistently withholds vital information from him about their case. She is no longer Ned’s sidekick in fact, he might just be lucky to consider himself as hers. I loved the dynamic of the relationship they had in The Rose Thief and felt that was missing from this story.

Overall thoughts.

If you loved The Rose Thief as much as I did you will really enjoy the continuing crazy comedy that is The Interspecies Poker Tournament. If you’ve not read The Rose Thief, I’d thoroughly recommend grabbing it now and then following up with this book as a delightful dessert!

E.M. Swift-Hook

Maybe by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook . Sometimes we walk the edges of realty… You can read Part I here.

“So what has this to do with anything?” she asked at last, when the small talk dried up over their beer.
“Your dream,” he said, “the one you keep having about a glowing necklace of strange pearls.”
Jess nodded, she had told him of it when he asked her if she ever remembered her dreams.
“I’m not sure they were pearls, just the kind of odd light they gave off made them seem like it. They were pearls shaped in ridged spirals.”
In the dream, she had seen something glowing under her uniform blouse, shining and everyone staring until she had run away and been standing on a cliff edge, then ripping open her blouse to see the strange necklace lying there on her naked breasts. The image came into her mind clear as a photograph and she heard Roald draw a small, sharp breath, which brought her back to the pub.
“Uh, yeah,” he said, his expression slipping into an odd smile, “that’s the one.”
For some reason, she felt uncomfortable and looked out of the window to escape the moment.
“It’s only been since the – the accident,” I’ve never had that kind of dream before.”
Standing naked on the cliff-edge, her hair so long it ran the full length of her back and blew out around her, sparking with energy, and feeling so whole, so complete – so powerful.
“I know.”
The way he said it, made her blush. She started pulling herself to her feet, leaning on the crutches.
“I need to get back – I promised I’d take my aunt to the talk on astrology. She loves all that kind of stuff.’
Roald rose too.
“And you don’t?”
“I never used to,” she admitted, as he helped her ease back into her coat.
“And now?”
She tried to shrug, but it was not so easy with the crutches.
“Maybe, believing in fate helps make this all seem less meaningless. Maybe it helps make sense of the senseless. Even if all I’m doing is seeing patterns in the stars by joining the dots with random lines.”
He stopped on the way back up the hill to the car. Asking her to wait as he dived into a tourist shop, full of costlier craft items. She studied the window but could not see what had caught his eye. When he came out he pushed a small flat box into her hand.
“Just something to remember today by,” he said. The leaned forward to kiss her, lightly, one hand running up over the curve of her breast, lingering as he whispered: “You look beautiful naked.”
She had been so stunned that she had frozen, her whole body stiff, paralysed. Just as it had been when she woke up to find herself in hospital. So she had not said a word as he turned his broad back away and strode off into the crowds of tourists, lost to sight the moment he did so.
Sitting drinking coffee poured from her aunt’s ceramic samovar, it seemed a lifetime ago.
 “You know the young man I mean, don’t you pet? He came to one of my rune workshops? You went out with him a couple of months ago – he seemed such a nice young man.”
“I don’t think they got along, Susan,” her uncle said, frowning.
“No. We didn’t have much in common,” Jessica said quickly.
“Oh that’s such a shame,” her aunt sounded almost as if she really meant it. “He was at the workshop again yesterday, I told him he should be the one teaching it, he’s very good. I invited him over for dinner.”
Jessica felt her hands lose all their strength and the tiny coffee cup slipped through her fingers to shatter on the polished wood of the floor. It was suddenly hard to breathe, as if something was stifling her. Then her uncle was there, helping her up, helping her to escape to the sanctuary of her own room, knowing what she needed, so leaving her alone after a brief hug.
“Don’t fuss over the girl so much, Dave. She’s not a piece of china. And get something to clear that up, good thing it was mostly empty. I’d never get the stains out of the curtains…”
Her aunt’s voice receded as the door to the lounge closed.
She sat there for a moment then started to pack. Slowly, because movements were awkward and not easy still. She had tried to slip unnoticed through the kitchen, but her uncle was there starting on making the usual sandwiches they had for lunch, thick cut ham with pickle for Aunt Susan, and Marmite salad for himself and Jessica. She saw him take in her appearance as he looked up from his work and he wiped his hands on a tea-towel, before reaching into his pocket.
 “Take this, lass.” He pushed a wad of notes into her hand. “No arguments. Come back when you can. “

Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook

Part 3 of Maybe will be here next week…

Shop, they said
Until you drop, they said 
But frankly
I’d rather stay in bed
I’m warmly huddled 
With a cherry-red nose
And no fucker 
Trampling only my toes
Shop they said
You will have fun
Me, I’d rather 
Eat a bun
I may be fat and my clothes
May be funny
But come tomorrow I will still
Have some money

©️jj 2019

Blind dates are excruciating. But when you are on the shady side of thirty and manless your married friends always want to fix you up, although I sometimes think they only do it because they want me to be as miserable as they are. I’ve been to barn dances with hard-handed farmers, to the ballet with poseurs, to rugby matches with boys called Crispin or Alexander, to tea at the Ritz with mummies’ boys…
Need I continue?
It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine how excited I wasn’t as I stepped out of my taxi at an exclusive venue in Mayfair. I paid the driver and trod the spotless pavement to where a thug in a tuxedo guarded the door. He leered cheerfully at me as I approached.
“Name?”
“Cerys Watson.”
He looked down at his smartphone and his grin widened. He turned to open the door for me.
“Welcome Miss Watson.”
His breath was hot on the back of my neck as I walked into the foyer, but he didn’t make the mistake of touching me.
A uniformed concierge surged forward. “Miss Watson. May I take your wrap?”
I allowed him to take the vintage mink and velvet confection – loaned for the evening by the ‘friend’ who had talked me into this latest piece of idiocy. As he handed off the cloak to a scuttling hatcheck girl I took a covert glance around, marking both the understated opulence and the exits against any future need.
“If you would be good enough to follow me.”
I chose not to challenge his overblown phraseology, following quietly in his wake and wondering why I could smell his fear. When he opened one leaf of the double doors I understood.
This Halloween ball needed no fancy dress. The club was chock full of vampires and their pretty pets. As we crossed the room I felt the cold assessing eyes of the bloodsuckers and the hot hostility of the blood sluts. 
My date occupied a prominent and advantageous table where he could both see and be seen. As we approached he stood to greet me. He was dangerously handsome in a darkly seductive mode that I found both interesting and challenging. As the terrified concierge effaced himself I found my hand taken in a cool, strong grip and lifted to a pair of perfectly sculpted lips. A pair of icy blue eyes assessed me from the toes of my black suede shoes to the polished crown of my head.
“Exquisite,” he breathed. “May I call you Cerys? My own name is Victor and it would please me greatly to hear it on your lips.”
“Victor.” I managed to manufacture the required blush.
He smiled, a smoothly polished seducer’s smile. “Will you take an aperitif before we dine?”
“A Tio Pepe would be pleasant.”
Our drinks were served by a silent-footed sommelier with a stick up his ass. He obviously knew what his customers were, but had decided it was beneath him to notice. The desire to shock him out of this sense of superiority was almost irresistible. Almost.
Victor’s antennae were very good, because he caught something of what I was thinking, although it was obvious he understood it as embarrassment. He lifted my hand to his lips once again, and this time I felt his tongue taste my flesh. He smiled. “The attitude of servants should be beneath the notice of one as beautiful as you.” 
A raised finger brought a svelte waitress bearing leather bound menus. 
I didn’t even pick mine up and Victor looked intrigued. “You are not hungry?”
Hungry, yes. Decisive, no. Will you order for me, please?”
His smug smile showed me precisely how much that pleased him. He must have thought a ripe peach had dropped straight into his lap. I lowered my eyes and kept my face and body demure. This evening might turn out to be more amusing than I thought.
He ordered steaks. Mine was to be rare. His blue. Oh yes, vampires can and do eat. For pleasure. Blood is, of course, both pleasure and necessity. Gourmet food and fine wines are an expensively enjoyable luxury.
The atmosphere in the club was calculated to promote casual excess, from the sharply folded linen napkins to the soft-footed waiting staff, to the live piano music.
We had eaten our excellent steaks and drunk a bottle of Bulls Blood when a small stir alerted me to a young woman who was quietly climbing onto the stage. For a moment I could not believe my eyes. It seemed that Dusty Springfield had been reincarnated. From the panda eyes to the beehive she was perfect and when she opened her mouth to sing the voice was pretty close too. She sang You Don’t Have to  Say You Love Me and I was transported. I was vaguely aware of Victor watching my face like a cat watches a butterfly, but I was too busy listening to care.
When the girl finished her set and slipped away a small dance band took the stage, complete with brilliantined crooner. After a couple of swing numbers the rhythm changed and they launched into Frankie Laine’s Jealousy in full Argentine Tango rhythm. Victor held out an imperious hand.
“Dance with me.”
We took to the strip of dance floor and it was as if we melded into one entity. From the first ochos through cortados, turns and crosses he led and I followed. I flowed into him with every crisp snap of my heels and he held me as if we had been lovers for a thousand years. When the music ended he let me go with extreme reluctance and led the way back to our table where a dessert wine so expensive it is only sold in half bottles awaited us along with petits fours and strawberries with chocolate dip.
Victor dipped a fruit and offered it to me. I ate obediently, but to be honest the strawberry was so tasteless as to render the exercise wholly pointless. The wine, however, was of a quality that makes the tastebuds sing. 
“Where,” he asked with elaborate casualness, “did you learn to dance.”
“Many places, sir. But the Argentine Tango? On the streets of Buenos Ayres. You?”
“Too many places for you to bother your beautiful head with.” He signalled with one long white hand and the waltz the band had been playing was replaced by the sultry seduction of the rumba. 
I needed no second invitation and we took to the floor, moving as one body in perfect rhythm. Let there be no doubt about it, the undead can dance. As we circled the floor, the lights in the room dimmed leaving just one spotlight  following us as we moved, linked inextricably together by the sensuous demands of the dance. 
As the last note dropped into the air, the light was extinguished leaving me in Stygian blackness held in the strong hands of a Master Vampire. He bent his mouth to my neck and I could feel the excitement run through his body.
“Mine,” he groaned.
“Not so fast, my friend.” I snapped my fingers and the room filled with an ochre-coloured pulsating light. Dropping the simulacrum of human beauty I stood there in my true form laughing.
I had always known I was dancing with a vampire. He, poor fool, didn’t realise his last ever tango had been in the arms of the devil…

©️Jane Jago 2019

This is the place.
Here.
Once it was full.
Life.
People warmed, working.
Here.

This was the place.
There.
Empty and bleak.
Dead.
No one left, useless.
There.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Welcome to the Hotseat of Truth, a device in which your protagonist is trapped. The only way to escape is to answer five searching questions completely honestly or the Hotseat will consume them to ashes! Today’s victim is displaced mage, Raven, from Catalyst by Stephanie Barr

Raven is a powerful mage (half-dragon) who was left in the mundane realm after he helped tear the magical realm from the mundane one. He’s waiting for the Catalyst to show up so she can pull them back together. He and his familiar, Gypsy, have reincarnated innumerable times but they keep their memory and, while still magical, are generally stymied by the lack of magic manna in the mundane world. 

Question one: Has waiting taught you patience?

I thought it had until I met Chloe. I guess there’s more to this patience thing that waiting powerlessly. I guess sometimes it means not being in charge. That I hadn’t expected.

Question two: How does  powerful magic wielder cope with being trapped in a world where the magic is so weak?

I had to learn other skills. I tend to like working with my hands, so I usually take on craftsman-type jobs, learning new skills each life to keep it from getting boring.  And I can do little things, some telekinesis and sensing things, but I’ll tell you, getting back to where I really have my powers back is something I’ve more than dreamed of. I can’t wait. Well, I can, but I don’t like it.

Question three: What is the first thing you will do when you can return to your own world?

Well, we’re not really returning to my own world, more like, thanks to the Catalyst, the world is coming back to us, so we’ll all be one world where magic is as normal as gravity. But, yeah, I have plans. Probably check my hoard—it has been twelve thousand years—and then show Chloe what a naturally-born mage can do when he’s not dependent on her power to do magic. What spell will that be? I don’t know. After some of the stuff she’s managed, she’s not easy to impress. But I’ll come up with something.

Question four: Does reincarnation hurt?

Yes and no. Reincarnation isn’t inherently painful but death can be. My last death was pretty miserable dying from an overabundance of shock treatments. But it is inconvenient. You never know where you’ll end up and some families are pretty miserable to grow up in like this one was with an abusive father and a mother who was grateful he had another target. It’s also kind of tough to go through school since I have literally heard it all before, but there’s usually something new and exciting to liven each life up. I feel like I learn something every life when I live long enough to do so. I do get to make new mistakes since I have the chance to learn from my old ones. Hmm. You’d think I’d make less of them…

Question five: Is Gypsy a friend as well as a familiar?

Why would you have a familiar that wasn’t a friend? I mean, I can’t even remember when she wasn’t a big part of my life. She knows me better than anyone and she still sticks with me. We wouldn’t keep seeking each other out, life after life, if we didn’t care about each other deeply. Not that keeps her from telling it like it is. In fact, that’s the best part of our friendship. We can tell each other the honest truth without worrying about it destroying what we have.

She awoke with the idea in her head that she had been asleep for a very long time. 

Sitting up gingerly she found herself in darkness. But movement must have alerted someone, because a dim light came on. Showing her a long room full of beds, like a hospital ward.

There seemed to be a window about halfway down and she forced wobbly-feeling legs to take her there.

Her suddenly nervous fingers fumbled with the blind, until she could look out. Onto a landscape of black rocks, red ‘plants’ and white sky.

She screamed until her voice ran dry.

©jane jago

“There has to be a formula.” Dianora glared at her brother. “There has to be an algorithm for writing a bestseller.”
“Ain’t” he grunted stubbornly. “It’s one of them wossnames.”
“Which wossnames precisely?” she placed her words as carefully as blades, but to no avail.
“The wossname that means there ain’t no rhyme nor reason, stupid.”
Dianora seriously considered physically attacking Adamo, but was deterred by the knowledge that he wasn’t a gentleman, was around twice her size, and perfectly capable of attacking her back.  
“So what do we do?”
“You just carry on writing the stuff that pays, and I keep on going to work five days a week. That’s what real life is all about.”
She got up and stomped around the room waving her arms in the air.
“And stop doing that or you’ll hit the wall and bruise your fist.”
Dianora laughed reluctantly. “Okay. I give in. Let’s eat.”

However, the idea of an algorithm had taken root in her head and whenever she had a spare few moments she input as much information as possible slowly, slowly building a picture of what would constitute the ‘perfect’ novel. She added character names, descriptions, traits, and sexuality. She carefully dissected storylines. She even read as much erotica as she could lay her hands on sourcing both terminology and description. Then she just looked at her work for a very long time, unsure if she dare press the combination of keys that would set her brainchild in motion.

It was a wet, cold Friday evening. Adamo was tired and frustrated after a particularly scratchy week, and he came in from work to find his sister clutching a bulky printout. It looked a bit on the thick side for one of the young adult novels that paid the rent, but he took it from her hands and dropped it on his desk.
“Any hurry for this one?”
“No, in your own time.”
He thought Dianora’s voice sounded a bit peculiar, but he was too tired to try and puzzle out the behaviour of someone who was, in his opinion, erratic at the best of times, and downright impossible when in a mood.

It wasn’t, therefore, until Sunday morning that he picked up the typescript and started to read. 
Three hours later he stomped into the kitchen and threw the pages down on the table with a bang.
“That,” he enunciated with careful clarity, “is absolute dross”.
Dianora turned from the pot she had been stirring on the stove and grinned widely.
“It is. But you couldn’t put it down, could you?”
“No. However did you manage to write something so horribly tacky and so completely compelling at the same time?”
“Oh,” she said airily, “I didn’t write it.”
“Well who did?” 
Adamo was getting snappy, which seemed to amuse Dianora greatly. She turned up the cover page and pointed.
‘Darkness of the Soul’ a dystopian love story from the pen of Arabella Churchwarden.
“Yeah, but that’s just your pet name for your computer…”
Then the penny dropped and he stared at her with his mouth agape.
“Yes,” she said proudly. “I wrote the bestseller algorithm.”

©️jj 2019

The life of an elderly delinquent in limericks – with free optional snark…

I am old, and my body attests
To a life full of action and zest
I won’t Botox away
The way I’ve lived my days
And I won’t shave the hairs on my chest

© jane jago

Gleb looked at the creature on his finger for a long time, amazed and heartened by the warm glowing gold of its tiny body. He knew it didn’t belong down here in the icy depths, and as soon as he had finished looking he would help it back towards the sunlit lands he heard about in his dreams.
Gleb heard Winter stirring, and felt the icy blast of her breath. Smiling gently, he took the fire bee to a place from which it could fly home.
That golden warmth would be something to think about in the cold of everlasting night.

©jane jago